


rumor has it

by kwritten



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 14:29:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1821820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anne Shirley's life filtered through the rumors you may or may not have heard about her</p>
            </blockquote>





	rumor has it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fluffybun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffybun/gifts).



Rumor has it that she was born romantically and tragically in a little house near the sea to a pair of delightful people and that nothing went well for her ever again after that.

There are those that say she came from a happy home and nothing went wrong at all, she just couldn’t abide the sight of four walls and she ran away like a leaf on the wind. They say she couldn’t sit still and her parents never understood her need for whimsy and change. They say she was desperate in her youth and ran into danger the way a child must touch a burning stove to know that it is hot.

There are those that whisper of her broken heart, a toddler hidden from the State until it was too late to repair the damage, a child raised in hostility and incapable of finding a home for herself. A child too used to chaos to accept or relent to care and concern. A child hardened by the streets and resentful of other people’s happiness.

Those who know that utter pain of a child without a roof or a kind heart shake their heads with pity and compassion; they talk of a child used for labor, abandoned, alone, neglected. They talk of a child who ran out of fear, not out of spite. They talk of a child who raised herself, who raised others, who gathered lost children to her like a shepherd. They talk of a child of the streets who longed for a home and trusted everyone and no one because her hope was pure, but her experience told her that people would not be.

They also whisper of a tattoo on her hip, of a flower or a fairy. They whisper of a nose ring and a navel piercing and black hair and dark black eyeliner. They say she was so fierce looking in the orphanage, no one would take her. They say she gave up hope. They say she wanted it that way. Others say she longed nightly for a home.

Some say she found it. Some say a family brought her home. Some say it was a surprise. Some say they found her in a train station and took her home for the night because they couldn’t figure what else to do with such a small girl alone in the world. Some say she was sent to them by mistake. Some say she ran to their home in the rain with her eyeliner dripping down her face and they kept her because she was so sad. Some say she begged to stay. Some say she turned up her nose and pretended not to care if she stayed or not.

Some say that they changed her for the better. Others say she changed them. Some say they were a young couple who longed for a baby of their own and ended up with a teenager because they couldn’t get one. Some she lived with a middle-aged pair of unmarried siblings who fought to keep her. Some say she didn’t want her but he did. Some say he died very shortly after. Some say she did. Some say it doesn’t matter anyway because she was never taken in.

Some say she sprang into being in the woods like a nymph. Some say she is the daughter of a foreign prince and a luckless pauper ignored and forgotten. Some say she will always be on the run. Some say she is a spy.

They all whisper of the tattoo on her hip. They say she got it before she was adopted. They say she got it on her eighteenth birthday to celebrate someone who had died. They say they tried to get her to get it taken off and she cried. They say she is devoted to it. They say it was her only companion in her darkest hours. They say she had many companions like this. They say she gave her reflection a name once (maybe twice). They say she didn’t know any different. 

They can’t decide if that makes her more pitiful or more beautiful.

They say she can’t decide if that makes her stronger or more broken.

They say she had a normal childhood with happy parents and heaps of siblings that she visits every holiday and has never been broken before in her life. (This is the story that cannot explain anything really. This is the story that they cling to when they see her bright eyes and smiling face tripping down the hallway. 

This is the story that pretends heartbreak only happens in the darkest stories. This is the story that presumes the most special creatures we meet are protected and cradled by the universe in every moment before we meet them. This is the story that carries the most hope.

Hope of a world where Miss Shirley didn’t have to crawl through fire to hold out her hands at others at the end of it. Hope of a reality where the brightest souls always are assured of how precious they are.)

She would say every soul is precious. That the broken and the whole are equally beautiful.

 

This is the story that she smiles wistfully at, like one does after finishing their favorite novel for the hundredth time.

 

Almost as if it was the story she told herself over and over in an attempt to make it true. 

 

 

 

 

Rumor has it that in their first staff meeting, he tried to catch her attention by whispering “carrots” in her ear and she smiled very sweetly as she poured lukewarm, stale coffee with extra cream and three packets of sugar right on top of his head without batting an eye.

There are others who insist that she takes whipped cream in her coffee and that that morning she had gone without. There are those who argue that Miss Shirley only ever drinks tea with milk and honey and that the honey in the bottom of the cup had glopped down onto his nose. Still others say she flew into a blind rage and threw a vase of flowers from the table at his head, narrowly missing an elderly librarian sitting in a corner with her knitting. 

This last is the most unsubstantiated. 

(Except for that fellow who likes to describe in detail that glop of honey. He is very old and his opinion is not counted for much by anyone. Also that honey drop grows bigger every year.) 

It is, therefore, the most popular version of the story. 

Sometimes this particular rumor ends with him smiling up at her and proposing right there on the spot and her spinning out of the room in a mad dash. Sometimes he stands up and shouts at her until they are both red in the face, screaming as the rest of the staff dozes off or plays with their phones. Sometimes the principal calls her onto the rug and threatens to fire her and he defends her profusely, placing her in his debt, which she resolutely ignores for years. Sometimes he forgives her the second he sees her and everything after that is only incidental. Sometimes the entire staff laughs and he laughs along and she laughs too and buys him a new shirt the next day. 

They say it is the pink striped one that is worn at the elbows and has mismatched buttons that he wears every Thursday. They say the stripes used to be red and that she bought him a new one for Christmas years later that he refuses to wear. They say he used to hate the color red until he met her. They say she used to hate the color red until she saw him wearing that shirt. They say he put it on right on the spot, pulling his customary polo over his head right there in the staff room and buttoning her gift over his bare chest with a slight smirk on his face. They say that he wore that shirt the first time he managed to wheedle a real date out of her and again when he proposed. 

Later they will whisper that he made her stand in the hall during her first labor as he tore the house upside down looking for it before driving them to the hospital. They will say that she had already packed it in her overnight case weeks before, but thought it was too funny watching him run around the house like that, she didn’t tell him until they were at the hospital. They will say that only Anne Blythe would stand in the hallway during her first labor and laugh at her husband for twenty minutes instead of just putting the poor man at ease. They will smile and say that only Gilbert Blythe would love his wife all the more for it. 

But that happens later. Much later. 

 

There is another rumor. One that never went much further than the staff room. This one claims they have known each other much longer and the coffee incident was actually in an English classroom where they were students and not teachers. This one can never quite decide if it belongs in a high school or a university; if there was a chalkboard and desks or a long table and great windows; if she was punished for her outburst or if he was laughed at by the other students; if it started a war the likes of which the school had never seen or a friendship unbreakable by time or conflict. 

 

 

These rumors all have one very important thing in common, they all agree that she didn’t say yes the first time – and probably not the second, though it really depends on who is telling the story you see.

 

 

 

Rumor has it he proposed before they ever went on their first date and that she turned him down gently the way one puts a reckless and naughty puppy outside after it tips over their water bowl in confusion or haste; it’s not that you don’t love the chap any more or less after it made a fool of himself and his limbs. Rumor has it the second proposal was much more interesting anyway.

There are those that say they had been fast friends for so long she never considered that he could possibly be in love with her and laughed the first time he proposed. There are those that say she was the only one who didn’t know he loved her from the beginning. There are those that say they were dating and quite serious, had talked of getting a puppy, and he proposed in their shared kitchen while she struggled with an oversized box of wine her old school chums had sent her as a joke and he couldn’t stop laughing and ended up proposing before he could stop himself. 

There is another version. In this one, they are seeing other people and pretending not to be jealous. She is perfectly lovely and well-suited to him, but Anne is convinced she’s up to no good. He’s romantic and demonstrative and wealthy and loves his family, and Gilbert has nothing bad to say about him really. Except once at the bar with some friends who promised each other to be silent, but rumors spread anyway, because once at a bar with a glass of cheap beer in his hand Gilbert blurrily said _He’s everything she’s ever read about, and absolutely nothing that she wants._

He proposes, of course, the perfect one who is tall and says all the right things and never forgets to put his socks in the laundry hamper and has a good (but not too overly close) relationship with his mother. He proposes eloquently at a dinner, or at a park, or at her favorite art museum. He proposes with poetry. He proposes like he is the romantic lead in an ancient story to the princess of his dreams.

He proposes and it is perfect.

And she refuses.

Everyone is very clear on this fact: Anne Shirley was proposed to by the man of her childhood dreams and she said no. She said no and then dragged her roommates out by the elbow and drank herself into a stupor for a week. Or, she said no and then went to work the next day like nothing whatsoever was wrong. Or, she said no and cried for an hour and then ordered pizza and put on the BBC’s _Pride and Prejudice_ and ate an entire bag of liquorice by herself, with a six pack of beer. (She hates beer.) 

Rumor has it that six pack was Gilbert’s favorite brand. 

There is some confusion as to how much time passes after that. Single Anne Shirley with her pizza, beer, and liquorice grading papers (or writing them) (or both) for either years or months or weeks or a few short days.

There is no confusion over the second proposal. 

They all say it happened in a graveyard. An old, decrepit place; on a bench that Anne liked to frequent and take her grading when it was warm. They say there is an old story about that bench and the wild-growing lilies that covered the grave next to it. But that story remains a mystery. They say the two talked of dreams, like good friends are wont in the twilight after a good walk. They say she said yes without saying anything at all. They say it was simple and soft, the way the two of them always tried to be with each other. 

They say it was nothing like a story she would have written and everything like a story she loved to read.

 

There are whispers that he almost died and this is what changed her mind. A car accident or a run-in at the hospital on the night shift. The most outrageous stories tell of a man in an alley with a knife and a young girl crying out for help. Some say Anne didn’t need him to lie in a hospital bed close to death to realize that he was the one for her. Others say it was just a horrendous case of pneumonia and she was told a story about cancer. 

 

Sometimes the engagement was long and sometimes short. Sometimes they ran off to Vegas for their wedding. Sometimes it was a grand, lovely affair in her best friend’s back yard. Sometimes she went and found the little church where her birth parents were married and they wrote their own vows and nearly everyone cried. Sometimes they go back East to the grand cathedral his parents were married in and she’s uncomfortable the whole time. Sometimes they have a glorious honeymoon on a beach, or in Paris, or roaming the countryside with only their little dog and their backpacks. Sometimes she broke it off twice and threw him and his shoes out into the rain. There’s always rain. Sometimes he leaves for years for school, or she leaves for years to teach in an exotic location. Sometimes they went to the courthouse the very next day and never threw a party at all.

Sometimes they say she added a small “G” to that tattoo on her hip.

 

They say she wore the green dress he had casually mentioned he liked one day in the halls of school, her hair falling over her eyes and a coffee stain on the collar and her arms full of books and her shoelaces clacking on the linoleum as she dashed by. They say she had no particular feelings about that dress until that moment. They say he knew she was working too hard when the dress fit her like a sack on a hanger and he took her in to the hospital for a check-up and he demanded that she stop working so hard. They say there was a terrible row about it. They say he slept on the doorstep holding the dress. They say that year her drama club put on a play of their own creation and the lead wore that little green dress that dwarfed Miss Shirley. They say that dress is still in a box in the theatre department.

They say he bought her a green maternity dress the very same day that they found out she was pregnant for the first time. They say that it was always a bit too large and that she wears it all the time like a robe. They say her daughter heard the story from an upperclassman and made replicas of the original dress in secret and sometimes you can see the two of them walking down the street in identical green dresses with Peter Pan collars and short, puffed sleeves. They say Anne insisted they add a little lace to the bottom.

 

They say her daughter was wearing her green dress the day she was proposed to.

But that happens much later.

 

***

 

 

Every year Mrs. Anne Blythe asks the graduating seniors to write a short story for their final task. This is not particularly unusual, as she is prone to ask her students for much more creative writing output than any of the other instructors in her department. They grumble about it now that she is the head of the department, where they used to just shake their heads and smile to themselves, because now she has the authority to ask it of the entire graduating class and not just her own small section of students.

What perturbs the other teachers far more is that she is so successful. Students that would otherwise roll their eyes at such an assignment (or any assignment really) suddenly came out in droves, handing in rumpled scraps of paper and lingering around Mrs. Blythe’s office ( _please, call me Miss Shirley_ ) long past the bell has rung. Students who are notoriously late turning in the most miniscule task delivering theirs early, a sheen of triumph on their faces. Students who tend to brag becoming shy, students who always show up early now wander in late, students who don’t care suddenly caring.

(Of course, Mrs. Anne Blythe shakes her head sadly, truth is always in the eye of the beholder. She can count the number of seniors who never slip so much as a note of apology under her door, their names feel as though they are inscribed on her heart. The students who didn’t tell their story. 

The students whose souls she cannot linger over during the long summer months.

She can list them all off by name; some years the list is longer and sometimes shorter.

She feels each and every one.)

 

 

It is not a competition, if that is what you are thinking. 

It is just a short story and that is all. 

 

_Anything that strikes a chord down deep in your heart._

She says, beaming, over the top of the podium every year.

 

It can be anything, any sort of story. Something you are afraid to tell. Something that is the truest part of you, or the biggest lie you ever told. Something scattered, something strict, something poesy, something prosy. It can be anything you want to say right now. Not for prosperity. Not for me. Not for anyone else’s eyes but your own. 

 

(Every year there is a pile of sealed envelopes. “Miss Shirley please don’t open.” Every year her fingers caress the pile and her heart aches. 

Because sometimes we hide the darkest, most broken parts of us; we’ll do anything to shield the world from this.

But after years in education _years before in the system, years of being unwanted and unloved, years of being a dark, broken, twisted thing_ , she knows that the darkest parts are the ones that shout the loudest, begging to be heard, to be forgiven, to be nourished, to be healed.

Because more often we hide the sweetest, fragile, beautiful parts of us; more often children dare not expose their lightest parts, in fear of losing it. )

 

 

Of course, it can be anything at all that the students wish to write. And oh! She receives heaps of delightful, beautiful, dark, soul-wrenching stories every year. That she reads from start to finish and with the same amount of wonder and appreciation for each one. (The more flowery, the more desperate, the more her heart seems to hammer with memory.)

 

It can be anything at all – but what she usually finds is a rumor.

 

One year, no one can be entirely certain when or how long ago, the graduating seniors elected on a theme for their stories. 

_The Secret History of Miss Anne Shirley_

That year, and every year after, most of the stories forming a mountain of paper upon her old oak desk held within them a record regarding the mysterious rumors surrounding their favorite English teacher. It began in a time when she really was Miss Anne Shirley and had no other name at home, when Mr. Gilbert Blythe was a young science teacher and _not_ a grey-templed surgical resident a local hospital. 

Most of the stories are so old and worn they are like a favorite novel to Anne now, handed down from class to class in whispers throughout the hallways. They lick at her heels as she walks down the hallway in her square-toed boots and long, swirling skirts. They tease her _auburn_ hair out of its haphazard plait down her back, or out of the bun held on the top of her head with a chewed up pencil. They carry her through desperate mornings and hunt her down after particularly aggressive phone calls with temperamental parents. 

Every year on the evening after the first day of school, Anne slams open the door (or is waiting up on the couch for Gilbert, a glass of red wine in her hand and a dark look in her eye) and declares firmly that she won’t have it anymore, that she will set this year’s freshman class to rights.

And every year Gilbert laughs and says quite simply, “ _But darling, we are their hope. Would you take a child’s hope away?_ ”

Some years her eyes mist over and she whispers something akin to poetry that is drowned out by the wine or her trembling lips. Other years she throws a pillow at his head and tells him he can sleep with his sass on the couch for the week. 

Every year she lets it be.

 

And every year, she reads the stories aloud to him, sitting on the ground between his legs as he studies or reads on the couch or the porch steps. 

Her favorites are the ones where she is a princess or a duchess or an heiress; or Gilbert is a war hero. The ones that are pure fancy and romance. The kind of stories she wrote as a child and has stashed away in a box behind the spare towels in the linen closet. 

His favorites are the ones that get it right. The ones that carry within their flourishes a tiny detail that he remembers, moments that he lived and felt being told back to him through the words of a young person just on the eve of the their greatest adventure.

 

Once, he muses aloud that maybe they are losing the truth over the years, reading all of the stories that her students create about them. 

She just laughs, _oh but they are all of them true_.

 

 

 

Ten years from her first successful experiment she is in charge of the alumni reunion (as she is every year) and at the entrance to the rented hall they find a large scrapbook containing every story they wrote for her. All preserved lovingly and with great care. 

 

(Soon, she will teach the daughters and sons of students long gone but never forgotten. And she and Gilbert will compare the stories of the parents with those of the children, sighing happily over the changes and the similarities. Of the ways in which their magical story has been preserved.)

(Even if it wasn’t always magic, and even if sometimes it is the hardest thing either one of them have ever set their minds to do.)


End file.
